Through boulders grey and honeycombed, carving out a bed in time, two rivers meet on the south west side. The ebb and flow now realigned. Paved and railed. Containerised. Roadways hard against the tide. To cross you, morning and at …

With your reeds and your black swans this is The Railway. I’ve come to carve your circles straight I’ve come to bring your edges parallel and there: a ribbon of blue you’ll be to carry the coal that feeds me …

Out across The Lowlands, drifting with the coal dust to find home footing. Iron girder railway bridge, Footscray high upon the lava ridge. We reach a tidal canal: remnant waters ephemeral, born of floodplains salt lagoons. Blue rich. Then two …

Waiting on the saltpans, watching from the high ground: tide tide tide through the traps. Sun burns and burns the crystals bright, I narrow my eyes to the glistening light. A scatter of sodium chloride and silt, desiccant diamonds on …

We are researching western Melbourne waterways through the period of the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to write and produce a suite of creative works which explore industrial history and environmental change over time, and the lives of people who lived and worked along their banks.